Mother's Day

by Lucy S.

Mother's Day tomorrow. I don't call my mom for the holiday; for religious reasons, she doesn't celebrate it. I'll call her on Monday.

Once I took her older sister out on Mother's Day - my Aunt Ruth - who usually never left the house or backyard. Agoraphobic - she was scared of moving around in the world beyond the shelter of that home and walled in yard.  But one day when the 1980s were still getting started and I was a teen, I drove my old car there, the blue Toyota my parents passed on to me as I moved out into the world while a "minor" - and the others were gone, so we had ourselves a holiday. My Aunt Esther, Ruth's identical twin, and my Uncle Stuart, Esther's husband, had headed up to Yosemite with my parents and brother and sister. This was a first for Esther and Stuart, and a last. When would Ruth and I ever again be free together?

Impractical do-gooder that I was, I said, "What if I take you out and teach you how to drive?!  And then we can go out to lunch?!"

I thought the solution to so many serious, entrenched problems was to haul someone out into bursts of new experiences, give them more of the world they'd been denied. "OPEN YOUR EYES!" I would command them through these actions. "You're missing your life!" I'd make them have this epiphany without having to declare such a preachy truism.

Ruth'd already sipped down a few drinks as the early morning wore on into almost lunch time.  "Alright!" she slurred only slightly, laughing nervously. She brought a supply of old vitamin bottles filled with liquor in case she needed fortification. We stepped out into the front yard.

I don't know how we did any of what came next. I don't know how we found the new construction area in Inglewood, not far from L.A. Airport - how in such an old built-up area did we ever find streets where almost no one else was driving? I didn't know the area. But somehow we made our way to where Ruth would drive for the first and last time in her life at 45. She walked around to the driver's seat while I moved to the passenger's side.  "Put your left foot on the clutch," I told her, "and now your right on this pedal here, the gas, and you want to slowly, really slowly, let your foot off the clutch, very gradually, and then at the same time, slowly push down on the gas. I'll do the shifting until you get used to it."  She stalled a few times, and I laughed and said, 'That's okay! It's normal - everyone does it when they're learning to drive a stick shift!"  At last, she moved us forward with a bit of a lurch, but she was driving! I laughed some more. "You're driving!"

Ruth drove staring at her feet, while I steered and shifted. "Hit the brakes and the clutch!" I'd say as we whizzed around the corner, me downshifting to abruptly slow us down when I could. We traveled the same square over and over. Twice she stopped on the side of the road, took a vitamin bottle out of her purse, and gulped down whiskey. I think now that she was terrified, but I was sure back then that I could good-naturedly bluster her along until she realized that she could do this! And she could change her whole life!  I would cure her!

At some point, we'd finally had enough of the driving lessons for the day - "for the day," as if it was any old day, and we'd pick this up again day after tomorrow...

We traded seats and as I drove back onto the busy big streets, she had me pull into a shopping center on the right. She wanted to buy me something. Because there was a shoe store, she exclaimed, "Shoes! How about shoes?!" I did the usual "you don't have to buy me anything" spiel, which I meant -- I barely had room to keep the brown paper bags I had all my stuff in; I didn't need more of anything right then, but I knew she hadn't taken anyone into any store in many years to buy something. "Alright, yeah, I mean that would be great!" I said. More sips from the vitamin bottle - and then we went in the store. She bought me wooden bottom sandals; I've never seen anything like them since. "How about lunch?" she suggested, her voice higher pitched as she grew drunker. "There's a Mexican restaurant right in here!"  Finally, I was a little worried about her drinking, but I said, "Yeah... That sounds great." More sips from the vitamin bottle, and we went in.

Mother's Day - so it was full. When they called us for a table, Ruth stumbled a bit as she walked, but we made it. She ordered a margarita - tried to tell me to order one, and I said, "Ruth, they're not gonna let me have one; I'm underage," and I saw she was all set for an escalating argument with the server so I said, "No, really, I don't want one right now - I'm too tired. I'll have some wine later at home!"  Ruth'd always like people to drink with her, to make it all more festive, a party, and not just her, drinking alone. We ate, and she had one more margarita.

"Why is that baby looking at me?" she asked.

"Oh no..." I thought. "Oh, I hate when she gets like this..."

"Why does that baby keep looking at me?"

I laughed a little."What? Oh, no, I think she's just looking at the light from the windows near us!"

"No, she keeps looking at me."

 "No, no... " Casual laughter, and aw shucks smiles from me. "Hey, I wanted to ask you if you could show me how to sew a jean skirt!"

"What...."

"Alright! Well, how about if we get back home?!"

She stumbled as she walked, and I kept gently guiding her by the arm, trying to be ready to catch her if she fell.

On the way home, she insisted that we stop at the liquor store near their house. She'd been here a few times when she'd been desperate enough to walk over with Esther and Stuart gone. I stupidly pulled over - what else could I do, I thought back then - she's my aunt... In the store, she kept saying to the guy she knew, maybe in his mid-20s, "I want you to meet my niece!" We smiled awkwardly at each other, nodding, as I tried to hurry her to choose what she wanted, and then she said, "NO! I want you to meet her!" meaning, I guess, that she wanted us to strike up a rousing conversation and maybe plan a whole relationship in the space of those terrible minutes - and she walked behind the counter to grab him by the arm.  He knew her. "Ruth, now Ruth, you HAVE to get out from behind here or I'm going to call the police." She was knocking over bottles back there. I had my nervous half-smile, half-shock face on; I too kept calling her, telling her we had to go. He dialed and pretended to be talking to the police, but it didn't phase her. Finally, he walked her out of there, holding both shoulders from behind, and even left the store to help me put her in the car parked oh so thankfully close on the street. I thanked him, smiling even as my eyes kept filling, trying to unobtrusively brush away any overflow with the tips of my index fingers.

I got her back home where she slept for a few hours. When she woke up that evening, she kept asking, "Did I do anything wrong? Are Stuart and Esther here? Are they mad?" "No, no, no - everything's fine," I kept saying. "Thanks for the shoes and the lunch! That was really fun!" "It was okay?" she asked. "Yeah! It was great!"


I think of my Aunt Ruth on many Mother's Days. I wonder what made her so scared of so much, But she loved her own parties, the times she'd put on music, get some of the family to dance with her, have some drinks.  Later I had my theories about what "should have been done" (by who?). That sureness felt good in my late 20s and early 30s, but it didn't hold up.  I want to resist a neat ending, a sentimental proclamation that at least she got to drive for one day in her life and celebrate Mother's Day by taking her niece out. But I can't. It could have been a disaster; it's true; she shouldn't have been driving that way - and for the first time ever. She could have landed in jail because of the liquor store fiasco, or caused who knows what scene in the restaurant as alcohol mixed with anxieties I couldn't comprehend.  But we survived, and maybe she remembered some of it, or maybe she enjoyed some of it while it happened.